It was 50 years ago today: Shooting the Sgt Pepper album cover
The uncropped and unaltered Sgt Pepper front cover setup
Just a quick post to honour the fiftieth anniversary of the photo session for the “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album cover. Peter Blake and his then wife Jann Haworth conceived the idea, and assembled the various elements with assistance from a number of people. Michael Cooper is credited as the photographer, but it was mainly his assistant Nigel Hartnup who operated the camera, including the one that made it to the cover, while Cooper merely directed the shoots.
Here are some useful links re the cover photo session:
- TheBeatles.com (some black and whites from the day + two outtake front cover photos)
- Sgt Pepper photos
- Beatlesource.com (a large collection of outtakes, note that the ones where The Beatles are holding guitars are fakes)
- The Beatles Bible
The Daily Beatle-articles about Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band from the archives:
Any news on the rumored Pepper set that's coming out in June?
Roger. Love the blog. Reading it for a good few years now. Also love the kenwood Lennon blog. Worth adding his then and now post on the photoshoot. kenwoodlennon.blogspot.ie/2013/01/flood-street-4-chelsea-manor-studios-sw3.html?m=0
From Keith Allison:
A couple months ago I was at Ringo's home. We were in his man cave watching tv, when a delivery from England came in. It's was from Giles Martin, George Martins son. What's this? It's the Sgt. Pepper album remastered. I said, "I haven't listened to this in I don't know how long." Ringo exclaimed, "You haven't heard it in a long time? I haven't listened to it in decades." So we decide to listen to it on his high def top of the line system. So here we are sitting on the sofa, facing the Tv, muted, but with soap operas playing. We listened to every track together. I thought, this is a historically great moment. Sitting here with my friend, listening to Sgt. Pepper, that he's on as a Beatle, and that he hasn't listen to track by track, since it came out.
Only two copies of the remastered Sgt. Pepper album were sent out, one to McCartney and one to Ringo, to be approved by them both. So what did Ringo think? He thought it was great! Why? Because it originally was recorded on a 4-track with a lot of over dubs, which buried the drums. Now, the drums have been lifted and come through as they should. He was pleased. You'll be glad to know it was remastered at EMI Studios where it was originally recorded.